Immigration Reform

Frustrated with both President Trump and Congress, immigrant-rights activists increasingly are turning to the courts to try to alter the country's immigration policies -- with three new lawsuits filed on Thursday alone against the Department of Homeland Security.
Published
March 15, 2018

A federal court has stripped U.S. citizenship from a man who was supposed to have been deported but instead was naturalized after the government botched a fingerprint check, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Published
January 9, 2018

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Now that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has formed a government after nearly six months of rocky negotiations, it faces the monumental task of dealing with her handiwork: integrating the more than 1 million mostly Muslim refugees who have entered Germany since the chancellor opened the country's borders in 2015.

The illegal immigrant accused in the shooting death of Kate Steinle is charging the federal government with "vindictive prosecution" and collusion with city and state authorities, and using President Trump's tweets and public statements by him and his attorney general to make his case.

The Justice Department said in court Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made an "error" in his memo laying out the legal problems with the Obama-era DACA program, as a federal judge repeatedly blasted the Trump administration for weak reasoning in revoking the deportation amnesty.

The White House said Wednesday that President Trump opposes cutting a deal with Congress to protect young illegal immigrants from deportation for three years in exchange for three years of funding for a border wall.

President Trump predicted Tuesday that his border wall will stop "99.5 percent" of illegal-immigrant traffic as he toured eight wall prototypes being tested in San Diego, saying it will save thousands of Americans' lives and the money saved will far outweigh costs of construction.

States have the power to punish sanctuary cities within their borders and to force local police and sheriff's departments to cooperate in turning illegal immigrants over to the federal government for deportation, an appeals court ruled Tuesday in upholding a Texas law.

Top federal officials exaggerated the number of illegal immigrant criminals they had targeted for deportation in last month's enforcement sweep in northern California, a former Homeland Security spokesman said in defending his decision to quit the department.

An illegal immigrant from Guatemala was sentenced to seven months in jail late last month for paying human smugglers to bring his 16-year-old brother-in-law into the U.S., in what officials say is one of the first cases to punish a relative for enticing a family member to make the dangerous trek north.

Sanctuary cities are actually enticing more people to pay smugglers to help them make the dangerous trek north, not only putting people at risk but also enriching the smuggling cartels themselves, a senior administration official said Monday.

President Trump will visit San Diego on Tuesday to review prototypes for his border wall as tensions run high, after a video of agents arresting an illegal immigrant in Southern California went viral last week, opening a new battlefront in the war between the state and the federal government.

Facebook videos showing Border Patrol agents arresting a woman in San Diego went viral Thursday, with immigrant-rights activists saying they show a woman being torn from her children -- but the agency saying she was actually an "organizer" for a major smuggling operation.

President Trump said Thursday that his administration is looking to see how it can punish Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for her warning last month alerting illegal immigrants to impending sweeps by federal authorities.

The Border Patrol says it's been forced to release a drunken driver back onto the streets, and nearly missed out on nabbing a fake UPS delivery van carrying 77 illegal immigrants -- all because California's new sanctuary city laws have soured cooperation between police and federal authorities.

President Trump, whose administration is waging a legal war with California over providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants, will make his first trip to California next week to inspect border wall prototypes near San Diego.

Sen. Jeff Flake's bill to enshrine the DACA program in law would also make the illegal immigrant "Dreamers" eligible for Obamacare -- including perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to buy health plans, Congressional scorekeepers said this week.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions compared California's new sanctuary city laws to attempts by slave-holding southern states to nullify federal laws, and blasted California officials Wednesday for attempting to force a "radical open borders agenda" on the rest of the country.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened a new front in the legal war over California's sanctuary city policies Tuesday, asking a federal court to halt three state laws that prohibit police and businesses from cooperating with federal agents.

Illegal immigrant Dreamers descended on Democrats' national headquarters in Washington on Monday, staging a sit-in and vowing to make sure the party gets at least some of the blame as Congress slipped past President Trump's March 5 deadline for action on DACA.

Monday was supposed to be the deadline either when illegal immigrant Dreamers began to lose their status under the Trump administration's phaseout of the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty, or when Congress would swoop to the rescue and grant them a path to full citizenship rights.

Federal immigration authorities said California's new sanctuary law forced this week's sweep that netted 232 illegal immigrants in the Bay Area -- and set off a massive controversy after Oakland's mayor gave a public warning that may have helped hundreds of other migrants elude arrest.

Analysts said there was no comparison in recent memory for the sort of bad blood that's developed between President Trump and California's leaders, who have legislated, sued, tweeted and used just about every other tool at their disposal to try to stymie the administration.

Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan said Wednesday that the Oakland mayor's public warning about an upcoming raid left hundreds of criminals on the street and endangered law enforcement.

More than 850 illegal immigrants managed to elude deportation officers conducting operations in Northern California this week, and the head of the deportation force on Tuesday blamed Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for helping some of them escape.

Immigrants being held for deportation don't have an automatic right under the law to post bond and be set free, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a decision that could give the Trump administration more freedom to pursue stiff detention policies for illegal immigrants who show up at the border claiming asylum.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, whose city is across the bay from San Francisco, has publicly warned illegal immigrants in the area of scheduled sweeps by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The White House strategy to fix DACA and crack down on illegal immigration has shifted to the House and building support for get-tough legislation that could see a vote by mid-March, a senior administration official said Monday.

President Trump on Monday lamented the Supreme Court decision not to fast-track a decision on the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty and sending the case back to the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to speed up a case involving the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals deportation amnesty, refusing President Trump's request for immediate action and instead maintaining a lower court ruling that keeps the controversial program in operation.

The federal agency that oversees legal immigration to the U.S. has removed the words "nation of immigrants" from its mission statement, as the Trump administration moves to put Americans as the top priority.

President Trump voiced frustration Thursday with California's status as a statewide sanctuary for illegal immigrants, including gang members, and said he's considering pulling federal immigration enforcement agents out of the state as a response.

Illegal immigration from Mexico has fallen dramatically this decade, sending the overall population of unauthorized people in the U.S. tumbling below the 11 million mark, according to a new think tank study released Thursday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested this week that "mowing the grass" near the U.S.-Mexico border so that illegals immigrants can't be smuggled through thick vegetation would be a more effective measure to secure the country than President Trump's proposed border wall.

The violent MS-13 gang, which was nearly eradicated by the Bush administration, has been able to rebuild its ranks on the backs of illegal immigrant recruits, according to a new think tank report Wednesday.

Sen. Ted Cruz's stock is rising among members of President Trump's base who feel double-crossed after the president offered amnesty to illegals in the immigration debate. Some who opposed Mr. Cruz in his 2016 run for the White House are even clamoring for the Texas Republican to mount a primary challenge to Mr. Trump in 2020.

Health Secretary Alex M. Azar II said Tuesday that his department has a difficult balancing act when it comes to illegal immigrant girls seeking abortions, saying he has to balance their rights versus "as well as the interests of their unborn children."

Federal deportation officers staged one of the biggest enforcement actions in years against businesses in Los Angeles last week, arresting 212 people and serving audit notices to 122 businesses who will have to prove they aren't hiring illegal immigrants.

President Trump on Friday pinned the blame on Senate Democrats for the failure this week to approve a bill to protect "Dreamers," saying Democrats had abandoned those illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors and now fear deportation.

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, and this is often lost on conservatives. That might be about to change. In battles over protecting voting rights, conservatives are usually put on the defensive by lawyers of the litigious left as they seek sympathetic liberal judges to strike down common-sense ballot-integrity measures enacted by the states.

News good and bad travels quickly. Donald Trump pledged to secure the southern border, and thousands of prospective illegal immigrants began reconsidering their travel plans. Even before President Trump has had time to roll up the welcome mat put out by his predecessor, the number of illegals crossing into the United States has fallen dramatically.

Germans proving they're not sheeple are rejecting their mass-immigration-promoting ruling party in elections. The U.S. immigration system, in chaos, "mistakenly" gives citizenship to 800 immigrants ordered deported. Two foreign-born Islamists go on terror rampages in the United States.

Looks like Pope Francis needs to go to confession. At the very least, the pontiff should seek an audience with real estate mogul Donald J. Trump to ask for forgiveness over slandering him and denouncing his Christian faith.

From The Vault

Immigration arrests surged 38 percent during the first 100 days of President Trump's tenure, authorities said Wednesday, adding that agents have been freed from the tight restrictions of the Obama era and are now able to target a far broader universe of illegal immigrants for deportation.

Illegal immigration across the southwestern border is down a stunning 76 percent since President Trump was elected, with the flow of children and families dropping even faster as analysts say the administration's commitment to enforcing the law has changed the reality along the border.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared "a new era" in immigration enforcement on Tuesday, saying his prosecutors will try to bring stiffer criminal charges against repeat illegal immigrants and smugglers as part of President Trump's crackdown.

Illegal immigration across the southwest border is down more than 60 percent so far under President Trump, officials revealed Tuesday, even before the first new agent is hired or the first mile of his promised border wall is constructed.

The government flagged more than 1.6 million foreign visitors for overstaying their visas from 2013 to 2015, but deportation agents said they fell too low on President Obama's list of priorities to bother targeting for removal, according to a watchdog report released Monday.

The wrong type of border wall could actually make Border Patrol agents less safe, according to a new report Thursday from the government's chief watchdog, which said walls that block lines of sight can become ambush sites for attackers looking to get the drop on agents.

If President Trump's border wall stopped just 10 percent of new illegal immigrants it would pay for itself by saving American taxpayers from spending money on services for those migrants over their lifetimes, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

President Trump on Monday fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, after she "betrayed the Department of Justice" by refusing to defend his executive order for extreme vetting, according to the White House.

With a couple strokes of his pen, President Trump wiped out almost all of President Obama's immigration policies Wednesday, laying the groundwork for his own border wall, unleashing immigration agents to enforce the law and punishing sanctuary cities who try to thwart his deportation surge.

The Border Patrol nabbed more than 15,000 illegal immigrants traveling as families on the southwest border in November -- a massive increase that marks the worst November on record and the second worst overall, according to statistics released Thursday.

The federal agency that handles deportations spent more than $100 million of its money over the last few years to ferry illegal immigrant children around the U.S., according to calculations by a watchdog group that says the cash could have been better spent on enforcement.